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Title: Stanisław Ciosek papers
Date (bulk): 1980-1989
Collection Number: 2017C44
Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives
Language of Material:
Polish
Physical Description:
7 manuscript boxes
(2.7 Linear Feet)
Abstract: Correspondence, memoirs, other writings, notes, memoranda and reports relating to negotiations for transition of Poland from
a communist to a non-communist regime, and to Polish relations with the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia.
Creator:
Ciosek, Stanisław, 1939-
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Library & Archives
The collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual
or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Materials were acquired by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 2017.
[Identification of item], Stanisław Ciosek papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Stanisław Ciosek was born in 1939 in a village in central Poland, where both of his parents were school teachers with progressive
leanings. At twenty he joined the communist Polish United Workers Party, and two years later completed a degree in economics.
His first party work assignment was in the Polish Students' Association, the only government-sanctioned organization for academic
youth. He led that organization until the age of thirty-six, when the party found another position for him: the chairmanship
of the party and provincial regional government of Jelenia Góra, in the southwestern corner of the country near the Czech
and East German borders. Ciosek did well in his assignment and in 1980 was promoted to membership in the Central Committee
of the party and transferred to Warsaw.
Ciosek's new specialty was labor and unions, which in Poland of the 1980s meant counteracting the growth of the Solidarity
trade union. He served as minister of labor from 1983 to 1984. Ciosek was made a full member of the Politburo of the party
in 1988 and took part in negotiations with the Solidarity opposition in a series of meetings in Zawrat and Magdalenka, paving
the way for the "round table" talks between the Communists and Solidarity opposition in the early months of 1989. These talks,
in which Ciosek played a prominent part, made the semi-free elections of June 1989 possible. He ran for a seat in the Parliament
during these elections but lost, as did all of the party candidates, some of whom blamed Ciosek for the disaster.
At the end of 1989 the newly elected Polish president, Lech Wałęsa, along with the new premier, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, tapped
Ciosek to be Poland's ambassador in Moscow; he accepted. After returning to Poland in 1996, he became an adviser on Russia
and the post-Soviet countries to President Aleksander Kwaśniewski.
Scope and Content of Collection
Stanisław Ciosek's papers and photographs document mostly the years 1980 to 1996: his tenure as minister of labor, as well
as a Central Committee and Politburo member, endeavoring to contain the rise of the Solidarity trade union movement, followed
by nearly seven years of work as the new Poland's ambassador to Moscow.
Ciosek's Moscow papers include copies of important documents mixed with cryptic scribbles and doodles. His memoirs,
Wspomnienia (niekoniecznie dyplomatyczne): opowiastki z Polski i Rosji (Memoirs (Not Necessarily Diplomatic): Tales from Poland and Russia), published in 2014, provide something of a guide to
his papers. Of much interest in the collection are Ciosek's efforts to arrange for an orderly evacuation of Soviet/Russian
troops from Poland, and his meetings with Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the young Vladimir Putin (still under the wing of Anatoly
Sobchak, the mayor of St. Petersburg). Also of interest is Ciosek's relationship with Gennady Yanayev, Gorbachev's vice president,
and leader of the failed August 1991 coup. Ciosek's ambassadorial papers are a significant source on recent Polish diplomacy
and on Russia's "time of troubles" in the 1990s.
Krzysztof Dubiński: Okrągły Stół collection, Hoover Institution Library & Archives
Mieczysław F. Rakowski papers, Hoover Institution Library & Archives
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Poland -- Politics and government -- 1980-1989
Labor movement -- Poland
Poland -- Foreign relations -- Soviet Union
Soviet Union -- Foreign relations -- Poland
Poland -- Foreign relations -- Russia (Federation)
Russia (Federation) -- Foreign relations -- Poland